(Archived) REQUEST: Shared and non-shared notebooks in same pane

[Pete248 9]

Why not using a single pane like before and display shared notebooks with a different color? That way, we could use the new stacks feature with shared notebooks as well. Probably most people will stack notebooks according to which kind of business the notebook belongs, aka private, friends, company etc. And in most cases it is secondary, whether a notebook inside a stack is shared or not. So this separation of shared from non-shared notebooks is counteracting the usefulness of the new stacks feature.

Furthermore it would be easier to sort notes into different notebooks, if you don't have to switch between panes.

The only reason, why you present shared notebooks completely separate form non-shared notebooks might be because shared notebooks are handled differently within the database. But frankly it should be possible to hide this from the user interface. At least allow the user to create some kind of alias of a shared notebook to use within the stacks of the first pane. But as I said, I'd prefer to get rid of the second pane and just work with a different color for shared notebooks.

If someone really needs to keep shared notebooks separate from non-shared, like it is now, he could do this easily with a single pane as well by grouping all shared notebooks within a single stack.

Hope you rethink this 2 pane interface before the client leaves beta stage.

Pete

[muckster 0]

I just ran into the limitations of shared notebooks today. It's just counter-intuitive that shared, writable notebooks show up in a different pane and can't be integrated into stacks and accessed like regular notebooks. I'm using ifttt recipes and thought I had a slick workflow setup that allowed my wife to tag new emails related to our business and have them automatically imported into a shared notebook -- but it turns out, that's not how it works. Instead of sending messages to the shared notebook (I'm a premium user, so it's writable), the notes go into a new notebook with the same name in her own account. The shared notebook remains inaccessible this way -- which means that for my purposes, it's not shared at all. Sure, I can probably figure out a workaround with ifttt, but I was disappointed to discover that "shared" notebooks don't do what that name seems to imply. So far, everything else about my Evernote Premium experience has been terrific, and I couldn't be happier with the service. This is something that I hope would be addressed in a future update -- ideally, shared writable notebooks would integrate into the "account" pane and be just as easy to add to as a regular notebook through new notes, emailed notes, web clips etc.

Thanks!

[mdave 1]

Yes, please, on the "Shared SmartBook"

Very useful. The fact that I can't keep my notes in the notebooks they would logically be filed in (and especially since searching acts separately on them) discourages me from using shared notebooks.

Perhaps something like this would require sharing of individual notes via a shared saved search.

[sterlingz 7]

Yes, please, on the "Shared SmartBook"

Very useful. The fact that I can't keep my notes in the notebooks they would logically be filed in (and especially since searching acts separately on them) discourages me from using shared notebooks.

Perhaps something like this would require sharing of individual notes via a shared saved search.

This is a fantastic idea, and one that would hopefully be easier for Evernote to implement with their current infrastructure.

[mdave 1]

Perhaps from the UI perspective, the option to share any notes with a specific tag would work. Select the notes, drag a tag, share the tag.

[Pete248 9]

OK, I see, we won't see true integration of shared notebooks in the near future.

So what about 2 "workarounds" to make life easier with collaboration in Evernote?

1.) Make it possible to select a bunch of notes in a shared notebook and copy them into a local (non-shared) notebook (and probably vice versa for r/w shared notebooks). That way the shared notebook could function as a kind of collaborative inbox and after having copied the notes to a local notebook, you have all the benefits of local notebooks like better searching/tagging etc. Obviously collaboration would end after you have copied the notes into the local notebook.

Frankly that can't generate any issues with the data structure on your servers as this all happens within the client. I think it might be already possible with some Applesript magic, but with an integration into the GUI of the client this would be easier to use.

To make this even more useful, you could include a link to the shared note and a checksum of the shared note's content (I think you already use this to determine, whether a note has changed) with the local copy, so it would be possible, to keep the shared notes and the local notes in sync. I think about something similar to the "import only new pictures" in iPhoto or Aperture. When you paste the shared notes to a local notebook you get the choice of replacing existing notes or add as new.

2.) For true collaboration there is currently not other way than using one Evernote account for several people.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to switch accounts in the Mac and iOS clients. At least on the Mac client, you could do it the "iPhoto way", aka display a dialog to let the user choose the Evernote account he wants to load, when launching the client with the ALT key pressed.

That way people could easily switch between their personal account and their collaborative account (business, family etc.). I'm sure this would generate some additional paid collaborative accounts at least from power users. ;-)

Creating an additional Evernote account especially for collaboration might be against your philosophy, that an Evernote account "belongs" to an individual for lifetime, but as long as you can't come up with a working solution for collaboration - and the current shared notebooks integration is definitely not a working solution - you should consider this alternative.

Pete

[ngehani 0]

BTW, is there a way to add a footer to every note that is shared?

[sailorphyn 0]

I know this is a *very* old thread, but I am just wondering if this problem has been solved yet. It seems impossible to drag a note from a non-shared notebook to a shared notebook I have write access to. This is very inconvenient, especially since I often photograph notes on my iPhone, and then organize them on the desktop. But if I can't even drag notes, then what is the use of having write access?

I also agree that shared folders should not be any different than non-shared folders in the desktop GUI.

One reason why I love using Dropbox is that the folder sits right on my computer, like any other folder, and it is very easy to drag and drop content, and everyone with access to the folder (whether or not they are the original creator) have the same access and experience. I want sharing to be a feature of the folder, not place the folder into an entirely separate category.

What's strange is that people have been talking about this since Fall 2009. I understand that many employees have said this difficult to do from a programming perspective, but I bet that has more to do with the principles on which the platform was originally built (which may not have fully anticipated sharing) than with it being objectively "hard". You guys have a great product, which is almost faultless, except for this strange clunkiness of this feature. User experience should drive programming decisions, not the other way around.

[sterlingz 7]

One reason why I love using Dropbox is that the folder sits right on my computer, like any other folder, and it is very easy to drag and drop content, and everyone with access to the folder (whether or not they are the original creator) have the same access and experience. I want sharing to be a feature of the folder, not place the folder into an entirely separate category.

This is a great observation. I recently have been working with a client to implement a workgroup sharing scheme. We first looked at Google Docs, but Google Docs has a pretty terrible interface for how shared folders look to the people they are shared with. Folder hierarchies tend to fall apart for the users they are shared with, with subfolders inexplicably drifting up to the root level. It's buggy and kludgey. We are now looking at Evernote Premium very seriously to achieve the same thing. However, I completely agree that having the same access and experience is critical. That is not how Evernote is currently configured. The sharer has a different view of notebooks than the sharee. This is definitely suboptimal, especially since the shared notebooks are really second class citizens for the folks they are shared with. They can't add tags, they can't drag in notes from other sources, they can't delete notes. Also, it seems that it's not currently possible to change permissions after a notebook is already shared. These things need to be fixed, they will help even if the suboptimal structure is maintained.

What's strange is that people have been talking about this since Fall 2009. I understand that many employees have said this difficult to do from a programming perspective, but I bet that has more to do with the principles on which the platform was originally built (which may not have fully anticipated sharing) than with it being objectively "hard". You guys have a great product, which is almost faultless, except for this strange clunkiness of this feature. User experience should drive programming decisions, not the other way around.

I completely agree - this feature has the potential to push Evernote into mainstream business use if you can just refine these issues. Users really don't care about how different notebooks are treated within your backend. We just need them to be organized logically in our own notebook tree, not in an arbitrary secondary tab.

Evernote is hopefully going to work out for my client's small deployment - but just barely. I'd only be able to recommend this as a sharing solution to future clients with caveats.

[Metrodon 2,184]

So, we have the second implementation of 'sharing' (the first I guess being web only) on the Mac and soon on the PC.

People can complain about the limitations and moan that it doesn't meet their requirements but if you look at the way that Evernote develop and release, it becomes a pretty clear pattern.... Evernote take complex functionality and roll it out in baby steps across multiple platforms.

What this means is that I'm sure we will eventually get 'Sharing' on every platform and probably integrated into the main UI as well, but, given the size of the company and the sheer breadth of development it will take some time.

If you are looking for an immediate solution and Evernote's current functionality doesn't meet your requirements, well I guess you have 2 options. Stick with Evernote and take advantage of the frankly amazing functionality you can get for free (or $45), or move onto some other platform.

This really is one of the whiniest forums I've ever seen.

[sterlingz 7]

If you are looking for an immediate solution and Evernote's current functionality doesn't meet your requirements, well I guess you have 2 options. Stick with Evernote and take advantage of the frankly amazing functionality you can get for free (or $45), or move onto some other platform.

This really is one of the whiniest forums I've ever seen.

No Mr. Evernote apologist, I mean evangelist, this forum is merely trying to give Evernote some constructive feedback about how the way sharing falls down in real-world business situations. This is potentially a massive opportunity to Evernote's future growth (and viability as a company, which is something I think we can all agree on as passionate Evenote users is in our interest) but the way they've executed to date make it a tougher sell. I managed to convince my client to buy five premium accounts, but implementing shared notebooks across their company has been a clumsy experience. We've been waiting years for sharing, and the end result is pretty disappointing.

I am really sick and tired of the Evernote "Evangelists" calling anyone who criticizes the way certain features are implemented "whiney" and suggest that we leave the platform. I don't think it behooves Evernote to have you representing them. The position of an evangelist should not be "well, that's the way the platform is, and if you don't like it, get lost," which is what I see from the Evangelists over and over again on these forums. I'm a paying customer, I've been recommending Evernote to other people and businesses, and I take the time to document on these forums the pain points with this software, which while great, still has a lot of room for improvement. I don't appreciate the this kind of tone.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

No Mr. Evernote apologist, I mean evangelist, this forum is merely trying to give Evernote some constructive feedback about how the way sharing falls down in real-world business situations. This is potentially a massive opportunity to Evernote's future growth (and viability as a company, which is something I think we can all agree on as passionate Evenote users is in our interest) but the way they've executed to date make it a tougher sell. I managed to convince my client to buy five premium accounts, but implementing shared notebooks across their company has been a clumsy experience. We've been waiting years for sharing, and the end result is pretty disappointing.

I am really sick and tired of the Evernote "Evangelists" calling anyone who criticizes the way certain features are implemented "whiney" and suggest that we leave the platform. I don't think it behooves Evernote to have you representing them. The position of an evangelist should not be "well, that's the way the platform is, and if you don't like it, get lost," which is what I see from the Evangelists over and over again on these forums. I'm a paying customer, I've been recommending Evernote to other people and businesses, and I take the time to document on these forums the pain points with this software, which while great, still has a lot of room for improvement. I don't appreciate the this kind of tone.

FYI, the evangelists are not critical of helpful negative feedback. (Neither is EN staff - they have always welcomed positive AND negative feedback.) Speaking for myself, if often get annoyed at someone's tone. I'm sure you can relate, based upon your post above. As my dad used to say, "It's not always what you say, it's how you say it." So yes, if someone comes to the forum to blast EN b/c it doesn't do this that or the other & ___ (fill in the name of another app) does it so EN is lame b/c they don't, then yes, there's a reasonable chance they may get a response in kind. Pretty standard for all message boards & pretty much everything in life.

However, when someone says a particular issue or feature that is not in Evernote is "critical" for their use or post a laundry list of things EN does not do that they want/need, then there is nothing wrong with suggesting another app. Even non-evangelists do this as well.

Also, evangelists are often criticized for suggesting workarounds. The point is, if EN doesn't do something today, again, there is nothing wrong with suggesting workarounds that will work today.

Back to the topic at hand, Dave has explained some of the complexities involved with shared notes/notebooks. It appears major changes are not coming in the near or not so near future. So if it isn't working for you now, it may not be the right product.

[Metrodon 2,184]

It seems to me that you convinced your client to buy the premium accounts without doing sufficient due diligence. If you had done enough, then you would have known the restrictions with the current implementation and not had to put your client through the clumsy experience.

I am sure the Evernote team are fully aware of the constraints that the current system imposes, after all I am sure they use Evernote themselves daily. However, as I stated before they are a relatively small team developing on multiple platforms and as such have to decide which features to implement and at what pace. In your opinion, sharing is key and a massive opportunity - however there are a large number of users who may never share a note or care about it. We all have our own priorities and it is up to Evernote to decide how they prioritise.

Sharing is obviously important to them, but not key, so the functionality will drip out across the platforms as it is ready.

Finally, I'm not an employee of Evernote and so am free to voice my opinion on here as I see fit. I do feel that an incredible number of posts on here are whiney, the type of post that says that a user is not going to go premium, not going to renew premium, can't roll out Evernote until a particular use case is satisfied add in my opinion very little value to the forum as a whole. I can never understand why people stick with a solution that isn't right for them - if it isn't right move on. I'd prefer to be able to help users who can't figure out how to do things, report bugs and real issues than sit down for a moanfest about why my MOST REQUIRED FEATURE is not available.

If you don't like my tone, then I apologize but the reality is that we are incredibly spoilt on this forum. The fact that his Royal Highness the King of Technicalfulness actually comes on here and reads every post gives us access into the company that is pretty incomparable.In my opinion, we should take advantage of his presence and use the time he gives us constructively.

[MNBlockHead 3]

I used up my quota of "likes" on this forum. Great discussion, too bad it took a negative turn towards the end. I've been a paying subscriber of Evernote for a while now and there is much I love about the service for personal use, but lack of collaboration features is making me restless and looking into other solutions. What I most want is to be able to have multiple people add notes to a shared notebook as easily as a single person does. But if I share a notebook with my wife, she cannot clip a not to it. I think that this is in large part because shared folders are put into another bucket--they are listed separately and the clipper only sees your notebooks. It seems that the only way to really share is to have a single account used by multiple people.

I understand Dave's point about needing to list shared folders separately. Even Google docs this. Then again there are document management systems that allow for shared directory structures with per-folder permissioning to allow for private folders, but I expect that this is getting too far away from Evernote's intended design and business model.

What about sharing entire lists and allowing them to be layered, like many calendaring programs do? Instead of a "Shared" tab, you would have a menu option where you could toggle shared lists on and off?

I know none of this is trivial to program and I do appreciate what an incredible value Evernote is for personal note taking and curating, but better collaboration features will be necessary for Evernote's growth and to retain existing members who want to share notes with friends, family, and colleagues. I'm hoping Evernote can incrementally improve the collaboration. I would miss many of its unique features, the great web, Windows, Mac, and iPhone interfaces, the clipper and reader add-ons for Chrome, the handwritting OCR, and I certainly am not looking forward to trying to migrate notes, but I'm already looking for a temporary evernote replacement for sharing notes with my wife, perhaps a clipper that saves to Google Docs or something. If other users are doing the same, it doesn't bode well for Evernote being able to hold onto its user base.

[ngehani 0]

I am OK with shared notebooks but when you drag a note into the shared notebook, it should not move it, it should be a link to the original note or a copy that synch with the original notebook. Is this something that is going to be supported?

Example:

Notebook 1 -- Contains a bunch of notes (note 1, 2, 3, 4).

Shared Notebook - Contains Notebook 1/Note 4. This is the same note as in Notebook 1 but only these notes are going to be shared but I want the original note to remain in Notebook 1 and if any changes are made to the one on shared notebook or to Notebook 1/Note 4, these should be synched.

Any way to make this happen?

Neil

[Metrodon 2,184]

This has been discussed a great deal on here. Evernote staff have also said that they are looking at Sharing and so I'm sure there will be some changes in the short to medium term.

[muckster 0]

I know it's been discussed; I read the discussion going back several years. Just thought I'd add my experience. Thanks.

[Hovo 0]

Though I too find the split sharing tabs rather annoying,

I think if there was a way to search for something globally this would add enough functionality to make it more usable than it is currently.

Like another user said, it's rather unusable in its current state.

Thanks for your hard work, everything else is brilliant!

[JoseTomasTocino 1]

Ok I've arrived here from a thread I opened with this very same question and I got the very same answer, just "NO, thanks for the feedback".

At least in my case, I've paid a premium account to be able to share notes with my co-workers. I was expecting the evernote team to be more receptive from us, your clients, the ones that pay your bills. If you don't hear the user of your apps, then what?

So sad, I should have sticked to shared folders using dropbox...

[Jackolicious 808]

We're hearing you loud and clear. Thanks for the feedback... and the answer isn't no

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Ok I've arrived here from a thread I opened with this very same question and I got the very same answer, just "NO, thanks for the feedback".

At least in my case, I've paid a premium account to be able to share notes with my co-workers. I was expecting the evernote team to be more receptive from us, your clients, the ones that pay your bills. If you don't hear the user of your apps, then what?

So sad, I should have sticked to shared folders using dropbox...

Sorry dude, but just because you pay (which is a nice thing to do) doesn't mean you get to call all the shots. I've had a premium account for several years & have even upped my account several times since they began allowing that. I'd guess I've paid them more money than you have, so maybe *my* feature requests should come ahead of yours. (Using your theory) Fortunately, EN doesn't prioritize feature that way.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Ok I've arrived here from a thread I opened with this very same question and I got the very same answer, just "NO, thanks for the feedback".

At least in my case, I've paid a premium account to be able to share notes with my co-workers. I was expecting the evernote team to be more receptive from us, your clients, the ones that pay your bills. If you don't hear the user of your apps, then what?

So sad, I should have sticked to shared folders using dropbox...

Sorry dude, but just because you pay (which is a nice thing to do) doesn't mean you get to call all the shots. I've had a premium account for several years & have even upped my account several times since they began allowing that. I'd guess I've paid them more money than you have, so maybe *my* feature requests should come ahead of yours. (Using your theory) Fortunately, EN doesn't prioritize feature that way.

What are your feature requests BNF?

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Ok I've arrived here from a thread I opened with this very same question and I got the very same answer, just "NO, thanks for the feedback".

At least in my case, I've paid a premium account to be able to share notes with my co-workers. I was expecting the evernote team to be more receptive from us, your clients, the ones that pay your bills. If you don't hear the user of your apps, then what?

So sad, I should have sticked to shared folders using dropbox...

Sorry dude, but just because you pay (which is a nice thing to do) doesn't mean you get to call all the shots. I've had a premium account for several years & have even upped my account several times since they began allowing that. I'd guess I've paid them more money than you have, so maybe *my* feature requests should come ahead of yours. (Using your theory) Fortunately, EN doesn't prioritize feature that way.

What are your feature requests BNF?

Support under Truecrypt. Since I run EN with my database in a TC volume, my recent support ticket was answered with some suggestions but basically saying I'm running in an unsupported configuration. And, FWIW, none of the suggestions were applicable.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

What are your feature requests BNF?

Increasing the limit of 100,000 notes in the next 12-15 months...!!!

[ActivelyStill 0]

Echo the request to see shared notes on the all notes screen.

AND

Offline Shared Notebooks

These would be immensely helpful features.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Echo the request to see shared notes on the all notes screen.

AND

Offline Shared Notebooks

These would be immensely helpful features.

?

You can see shared and joined notes in the All Notes column. Offline shared notebooks don't exist and I am not exactly clear what this means. You want to share a notebook through Evernote's servers with someone else, but you don't want to use Evernote's servers?

[ActivelyStill 0]

Echo the request to see shared notes on the all notes screen.

AND

Offline Shared Notebooks

These would be immensely helpful features.

?

You can see shared and joined notes in the All Notes column. Offline shared notebooks don't exist and I am not exactly clear what this means. You want to share a notebook through Evernote's servers with someone else, but you don't want to use Evernote's servers?

I can see my shared notes in All Notes but my wife cannot see the notes I've shared w/ her. She has to go to the shared notebook. (This is all in iOS). Yes, I want to share a notebook through EN's servers and I want my wife to be able to view it offline. Although we live in the hotbed for tech the wireless carriers haven't figured out signal broadcasting. While shopping my wife wouldn't be able to view the grocery list I've shared b/c there's no reception in the store.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Echo the request to see shared notes on the all notes screen.

AND

Offline Shared Notebooks

These would be immensely helpful features.

?

You can see shared and joined notes in the All Notes column. Offline shared notebooks don't exist and I am not exactly clear what this means. You want to share a notebook through Evernote's servers with someone else, but you don't want to use Evernote's servers?

I can see my shared notes in All Notes but my wife cannot see the notes I've shared w/ her. She has to go to the shared notebook. (This is all in iOS). Yes, I want to share a notebook through EN's servers and I want my wife to be able to view it offline. Although we live in the hotbed for tech the wireless carriers haven't figured out signal broadcasting. While shopping my wife wouldn't be able to view the grocery list I've shared b/c there's no reception in the store.

I see about the shared notebooks in the All Notes. This is a Mac thread, so I was talking about that platform. The iOS platform handles shared notebooks completely differently, and I agree that it is an annoyance that they don't appear in the Personal Notes (not All Notes) tab. In my case, I have all of my shared and joined notebooks in one stack on my Mac, but they have escaped it on iOS. Searches on the Mac turn up certain results, while iOS turns up others, because the joined notebooks are not included. I think the obviously disjointed nature of the experience suggests that Evernote developers are already hard at work to address it.

I see about the offline notebooks. Because this is a Mac thread, and offline notebooks don't exist (though I wish they did), I assumed you meant Local Notebooks (a whole other matter). Yes -- not having shared notebooks available offline makes them much less useful.

[Pete248 9]

Ok, thanks for the feedback.

Dave,

are you considering to unify both panes?

If so any ETA when we will see this?

Pete

[Pitamakan 2]

I tend to agree; for those of us who aren't really using shared notebooks, the current layout just wastes some of the limited space in the left pane. Could we at least get a prefs option to remove it?

[bourne7 2]

Shared folders should be like non-shared folders in all aspects. Same pane, stackable, fully searchable (which is a major drawback now), moving notes in and out, ... . Color-coding is sufficient to distinguish those shared folders.

[engberg 89]

The notes in your own account have properties that cross notebooks. For example, the tags in your own account can be applied to any of the notes in your own account, and deleting that tag from your own account removes it from all of those notes.

Notes in other people's notebooks have different properties. Some shared notebooks are "read only", and the set of tags in other people's accounts are different from your tags. So trying to merge them all together would lead to a lot of strange inconsistencies (e.g. related to tags and permissions).

[Pete248 9]

Dave,

I understand, that shared notebooks are very different from a programmer's perspective but they are not from a user's perspective. Thus I hope the separate panes is just a quick first draft likely easier to implement but you will massage this shared notebooks somehow into the non-shared notebooks pane later on.

And I disagree with you, that merging tags and permissions of shared and non share notebooks would lead to a lot of strange inconsistencies:

Concerning permissions, you already have this inconsistency in the shared notebooks pane, as shared notebooks can be read only or editable. You handle this unobtrusively by greying out all fields in read only notes and disallowing to place the cursor somewhere in the notes body. For me this doesn't feel inconsistent at all. Where is the difference, it you would do it the exact same way with shared notebooks moved to the main pane?

Concerning tags, we have this "show only tags for selected notebook" feature already for quite some time. An frankly to me it seems this is what you use now for shared notebooks. Again no real difference, if you would combine the panes.

I admit, things will become a bit more complex, if I'd switch to "show all tags". It would be no problem to display just all tags, whether from shared or non-shared notebooks. But a tag might live in a different tag hierarchy on the local and the remote account. Because you don't have a true hierarchical tagging system, where tagging a note with a child tag automatically tags it with all parent tags, luckily this different tag hierarchies will not brake the exiting tagging within shared notebooks, even if a tag is assigned from within a different hierarchy.

Anyhow the question is, how to present the tags from shared notebooks in the "show all tags" view?

So far a tag can live only in one place inside the tag hierarchy. You could extend your tagging system with aliases, so that identical tags can live in different places within the tag hierarchy. Then you could simply merge the local tag hierarchy with the tag hierarchy of all shared notebooks, which have their their sync state set. This would be the ideal solution, but would require some additional work on your tagging system.

The easier to implement solution would be to just display the whole tag hierarchy of the currently selected shared notebook separately above or below the local tag hierarchy. It should be possible to add tags by either dragging tags from the local tag hierarchy or the shared notebook tag hierarchy onto a note and vice versa, which should not be a problem to implement, as this dragging simply adds some string (tag) to the tagging field.

And finally the inability to do a global search within all notebooks, whether shared or not, reduces the usability of shared notebooks significantly. I'd wish a global search would include all shared notebooks with an enabled sync state as well. Adding this feature naturally implies, that the 2 panes have to be combined to show the results from shared and non shared notebooks within a single list.

Pete

[ivan308 1]

I agree there should be no differences between shared and no shared Notebooks. The big problem I have is at least from initial testing I cannot even move a note from a non shared to a shared notebook. Can someone else test this and confirm ?

[bourne7 2]

I fully agree - normal folders and shared folders may differ from a programmers perspective, from a users perspective, a separation imposes limitations in the work-flow.

Personal note: I think one of the best features is the fact, that all folders with their notes are in ONE place. There is ONE box to search them all, ONE list of matching notes for easy browsing. Building Stacks is a long awaited feature, great to organize work, private, projects, ... . If someone shares a folder with me, I might want to sort it into my personal hierarchy, e.g. add the folder to Stack Project X. On a separate pane and without full search integration the sharing is too limited. If you have to set limitation, it seems better to limit tagging - at least for me, I always use the search box to find my notes.

[Pete248 9]

Seems I've hit the nail. ;-)

If other's agree, please reply with a "me too". The more who ask for a unified notebook pane, the more likely will see a GUI change in the final version.

And if you have anything to say in favor of separate panes, tell us as well. I currently see no benefit, but maybe I've overlooked something.

Pete

[sterlingz 7]

Pete,

Thanks for raising this point - I completely agree. Notes are much more useful when organized by subject, or context than having them split into shared/non-shared. I remember CEO Phil Libin saying on the podcast that he thinks of notebooks as being either shared or not in his mind - I wonder if this current UI design is an outgrowth of that.

To me, it doesn't make sense. I can see a use case such as having a notebook stack called "Client A," and then within that stack have my internal notebooks about various topics and notebooks they may have shared with me. Same for family, and other groupings. I don't differentiate in my head between whether the content is in a shared notebook or not, I just need to search across all the relevant notebooks in one shot.

Really hope this gets resolved for the final version.

[engberg 89]

Ok, thanks for the feedback.

[mrgoerend 89]

I agree that all the notebooks should be in the same list. Shared are blue, synchronized are green, local are grey.

[sbhebert 0]

I agree that all the notebooks should be in the same list. Shared are blue, synchronized are green, local are grey.

This makes sense to me.

[vwjohnny 0]

I agree that it should be on the same page, or at the very least when you search it should search both your local and the shared notebooks.

[sterlingz 7]

The current implementation is confusing at best. This (and other) threads is evidence of that. I don't see how your post furthers the conversation. If making terminology clear for users isn't something you're interested in, I'm genuinely curious why you'd post in this thread.

Perhaps implementation is not clear to you. But certainly the terminology ("shared") is pretty concise.

I guess the issue is most ordinary users who planned to use the shared notebooks feature expect them to be first class citizens within Evernote, and they're really not. They're in a totally separate area of the app walled off from the rest of your content, not included in global searches, can't have notes added to them directly (must be e-mailed in to the user's Evernote account address with the correct @ notebook tag), and not compatible with the Evernote web clipper. These are severe limitations, and they're not at all obvious until you start banging up against them.

It seems to me that the implementation Evernote has done is more like a publish/subscribe model. For the average user, a shared notebook is really more like an RSS feed that is subscribed to. Yes, they can edit and add to it, but that takes quite a few hoops to jump through and that's going to be lost on the average user.

[Metrodon 2,184]

I'm guessing not and they never give ETAs.

[heather 604]

We understand that from *your* perspective that it's the same, but they're really, really not the same thing.

We agree from a usability standpoint, it *would* be really awesome for them to be on the same screen. However, it would really, really make things horribly awful if things go awry.

[mrgoerend 89]

We understand that from *your* perspective that it's the same, but they're really, really not the same thing.

We agree from a usability standpoint, it *would* be really awesome for them to be on the same screen. However, it would really, really make things horribly awful if things go awry.

Instead of "they're really, really not," how about explaining to us how they're different?

From a usability standpoint (and from the users who have posted in this thread) they are the same to us. They're *all* notebooks, with the only differences being that some are started by other people and those that are started by others are extremely hard to access.

[heather 604]

instead of "they're really, really not," how about explaining to us how they're different?

Sure - it's in this thread already, a few posts up.

The notes in your own account have properties that cross notebooks. For example, the tags in your own account can be applied to any of the notes in your own account, and deleting that tag from your own account removes it from all of those notes.

Notes in other people's notebooks have different properties. Some shared notebooks are "read only", and the set of tags in other people's accounts are different from your tags. So trying to merge them all together would lead to a lot of strange inconsistencies (e.g. related to tags and permissions).

[mrgoerend 89]

instead of "they're really, really not," how about explaining to us how they're different?

Sure - it's in this thread already, a few posts up.

The notes in your own account have properties that cross notebooks. For example, the tags in your own account can be applied to any of the notes in your own account, and deleting that tag from your own account removes it from all of those notes.

Notes in other people's notebooks have different properties. Some shared notebooks are "read only", and the set of tags in other people's accounts are different from your tags. So trying to merge them all together would lead to a lot of strange inconsistencies (e.g. related to tags and permissions).

So that addresses (albeit unsatisfactorily) read-only notebooks. What about read-write shared notebooks?

I hope you guys understand that, sincerely, the current arrangement is actually worse than not having shared notebooks. They are unusable in their current form. And I mean "unusable" literally.

My wife and I (used to) share a "recipes" notebook (read-write) that we abandoned because it was not possible for her to get anything into the notebook. It wasn't available in the clipper or in the notebook drop down when creating a new note inside Evernote!

I must be doing something wrong, obviously, because this can't be the implementation you're working for.

[mrgoerend 89]

I want to make sure I say this:

I love the idea of Evernote. You won't meet many bigger advocates in the education world for Evernote than me, which is why this is so frustrating. I'd love to use shared notebooks with colleagues, parents, and students, but it is too big of a hassle at this point to be worth it.

[heather 604]

Notes in other people's notebooks have different properties. Some shared notebooks are "read only", and the set of tags in other people's accounts are different from your tags. So trying to merge them all together would lead to a lot of strange inconsistencies (e.g. related to tags and permissions).

So that addresses (albeit unsatisfactorily) read-only notebooks. What about read-write shared notebooks?

No, it's not just read-only notebooks. It's all notebooks. The properties of a notebook in *your* account are entirely different from the properties of a notebook in someone else's. Their NotebookGUID list is not the same. They don't have the same tag structure that you do.

You are allowed 250 notebooks in your account. That's it. No more. There's a notebook table that allows 250 of them. Shared notebooks do not go into that table. They're in an entirely different place. They do not cross.

Which is why we've been saying that we understand, for usability, yes, it would be cool, but from a programming perspective, it does not work.

Ok, maybe this will explain it:

You know how when you bookmark something in a web page, you get a nice little hyperlink that goes to that page, loads it in your browser, makes it look nice - and you can even do a "view offline" so you have that page available whenever you want, but you don't actually own the the actual page on your computer for other people to go to when they click it on Google? That's shared notebooks.

[mrgoerend 89]

Notes in other people's notebooks have different properties. Some shared notebooks are "read only", and the set of tags in other people's accounts are different from your tags. So trying to merge them all together would lead to a lot of strange inconsistencies (e.g. related to tags and permissions).

So that addresses (albeit unsatisfactorily) read-only notebooks. What about read-write shared notebooks?

Ok, maybe this will explain it:

You know how when you bookmark something in a web page, you get a nice little hyperlink that goes to that page, loads it in your browser, makes it look nice - and you can even do a "view offline" so you have that page available whenever you want, but you don't actually own the the actual page on your computer for other people to go to when they click it on Google? That's shared notebooks.

That does explain it well. Thank you.

I'll suggest that a simple name change would fix all of this confusion (for me at least). They are actually linked notebooks so why not call them that? Shared has the connotation (a lesson we just did in class today! ) that I am a "part owner" of the notebook, which, as you explained, is not the case. Calling them linked notebooks seems like it would more accurately reflect what they are.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I'll suggest that a simple name change would fix all of this confusion (for me at least). They are actually linked notebooks so why not call them that? Shared has the connotation (a lesson we just did in class today! ) that I am a "part owner" of the notebook, which, as you explained, is not the case. Calling them linked notebooks seems like it would more accurately reflect what they are.

Or...now you know. A rose by any other name & all that jazz. Accurate communication is key. OTOH, sometimes people just get way too Oprah-ish. Is it a node/folder/notebook/etc? Reminds me of a joke my husband & I have had for years. Pot, weed, Mary Jane, it's all the same. You smoke it & you get high.

There's a name. (Shared.) It's pretty accurate. They didn't call it "shark food." NBD. Adapt & move on.

PS - although my gold card is gold colored, it's not really made of gold. Should I call the bank & suggest they rename it to "gold colored plastic card" b/c it's really more accurate?

[sterlingz 7]

That does explain it well. Thank you.

I'll suggest that a simple name change would fix all of this confusion (for me at least). They are actually linked notebooks so why not call them that? Shared has the connotation (a lesson we just did in class today! ) that I am a "part owner" of the notebook, which, as you explained, is not the case. Calling them linked notebooks seems like it would more accurately reflect what they are.

I totally agree with this. I did not realize these very problematic limitations on "shared" notebooks. I was hoping to implement shared notebooks in a workgroup environment in a business I work with, but the way they are implemented is just a complete dealbreaker. We were considering Evernote as an alternative to Google Docs, but now I can see that Evernote won't work at all. Very disappointing. I agree that shared notebooks has a connotation of joint ownership and editing abilities. I think it's misleading, and will generate more confused users. Linked notebooks, or even subscribed notebooks would be much more accurate.

[mrgoerend 89]

I'll suggest that a simple name change would fix all of this confusion (for me at least). They are actually linked notebooks so why not call them that? Shared has the connotation (a lesson we just did in class today! ) that I am a "part owner" of the notebook, which, as you explained, is not the case. Calling them linked notebooks seems like it would more accurately reflect what they are.

Or...now you know. A rose by any other name & all that jazz. Accurate communication is key. OTOH, sometimes people just get way too Oprah-ish. Is it a node/folder/notebook/etc? Reminds me of a joke my husband & I have had for years. Pot, weed, Mary Jane, it's all the same. You smoke it & you get high.

There's a name. (Shared.) It's pretty accurate. They didn't call it "shark food." NBD. Adapt & move on.

PS - although my gold card is gold colored, it's not really made of gold. Should I call the bank & suggest they rename it to "gold colored plastic card" b/c it's really more accurate?

The current implementation is confusing at best. This (and other) threads is evidence of that. I don't see how your post furthers the conversation. If making terminology clear for users isn't something you're interested in, I'm genuinely curious why you'd post in this thread.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

The current implementation is confusing at best. This (and other) threads is evidence of that. I don't see how your post furthers the conversation. If making terminology clear for users isn't something you're interested in, I'm genuinely curious why you'd post in this thread.

Perhaps implementation is not clear to you. But certainly the terminology ("shared") is pretty concise.